During an appearance on CNN’s weekly media show, Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple took the opportunity to call out the network for allowing anchor Chris Cuomo to conduct a series of fawning “love-a-thon” interviews with his brother Andrew Cuomo last year, deeming the chats a “major black eye” for CNN.
With calls for Andrew Cuomo to resign as governor of New York growing amid scandals over sexual harassment and covering up COVID-related nursing home deaths, CNN has found itself widely (and justifiably) criticized for last year’s chummy Cuomo-on-Cuomo TV segments.
In the wake of his brother’s controversies, meanwhile, the CNN anchor has said he couldn’t cover it due to CNN reinstating its ban on him reporting on the governor. This only prompted further criticism and brought renewed attention to the network allowing its host to previously lend his platform to his brother to tout his own leadership on the pandemic.
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“I would be remiss, Brian, if I didn’t mention CNN’s own huge media story here with Chris Cuomo,” Wemple told Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter during a Sunday morning segment on media coverage of the New York governor.
Wemple added that the anchor had “all of these wonderful love-a-thon interviews,” noting that CNN “suspended the conflict of interest rule for Chris Cuomo for those interviews, yet all of a sudden they’ve enforced it again now that Andrew Cuomo is in the midst of a historic scandal in the Albany statehouse.”
The media analyst concluded: “It is a major black eye for this network.”
